As his find was an “unauthorized radioactive substance”, an investigation has been initiated and the find seized as part of an ongoing criminal investigation.

Charges are yet to be pressed, however.

Close call

Documents released earlier this year by the US National Archives reveal how close Nazi scientists came to developing the war-winning atomic bomb.

The APO 696 file is a survey of Nazi research concluded Hitler came close to assembling a basic warhead in 1944.

It includes testimony that such a weapon may even have been tested.

The file reports of German test pilot Hans Zinsser believed he saw a ‘mushroom cloud’ near a nuclear research facility at Ludwgslust in 1944.

His logbook — submitted as evidence to Allied investigators — reads; “In early October 1944 I flew away 12-15 km (7-9 miles) from a nuclear test station near Ludwigslust (South of Lübeck.)

“A cloud shaped like a mushroom with turbulent, billowing sections (at about four miles) stood, without any seeming connections over the spot where the explosion took place. Strong electrical disturbances and the impossibility to continue radio communication as by lighting turned up.”

A second pilot reportedly observed the same thing an hour later, and an Italian correspondent who saw the blast reported his observations to Mussolini.